The strongly Catholic Duchy, used to services in Latin and Cornish, was infuriated by the introduction of the Reformation – inspired revised ‘Book of Common Prayer’. 

The new prayer book contained an English-language only liturgy and there were instructions to remove anything considered Papist.  These changes fomented the anger still felt by many about the dissolution and destruction of Glasney Abbey (Penryn),  the price of wheat, which had quadrupled in two years, and the enclosure of common land by local gentry.  

The revised book had been introduced by the Protestant Privy Councillors who governed England on behalf of the ‘Boy King’ Edward VI.  Having been informed of the Rebellion which also made the Cornish gentry feel threatened with a supposed call to ‘Kill all the gentlemen’ and the march of the rebels on Exeter, the Lord Protector sent Lord John Russell to put down the revolt when word reached him that many of the West Cornwall landowners had sought refuge in the castle of St. Michael’s Mount where they were besieged.  

When the rebellion had been defeated, Russell’s revenge was swift and brutal. 

He appointed a commissioner to remove all Catholic relics from the Churches and ordered the execution of twenty eight Cornishmen at Launceston whilst the main leader of the revolt in the far west of the county, Martin Geoffrey, Vicar of St Keverne, was hanged, drawn and quartered in London with his head impaled on a stake on the London Bridge.  It has been estimated that one in three Cornishmen died in the rebellion and its aftermath which may well be an over-estimate but demonstrates the significance of the rebellion.